03 - Bakineering and other things
Hello! I hope you had a wonderful Diwali and a great November. This year really flew by, didn’t it? Personally, I find the end of each year scary, scarier than a birthday. It forces me to look at how I spent the year. Did I grow? Did I do anything worthwhile? There’s a thin line between productive reflection and slightly nutty, possibly unhealthy reflection. I tend to do the latter quite often.
I haven’t been able to write much this month. I’ve been watching far too much anime and reading manga and generally postponing any year-end reflection. 😅
November’s essay is tiny but the links are interesting. Enjoy!
⭐️ Hi, I'm Sachi and this is Currents where I talk about a lot of things. Sometimes the links are better. (The links are better this time) If you want to unsubscribe, click the link below. If you enjoy this, please share it with a friend/ random acquaintance/ colleague/ pet.
🧁 Bakineering
I truly enjoy watching reality shows about food. I have watched nearly every season of Masterchef AU. I find such pleasure in watching other people cook new and interesting things, I can’t even explain it. I recently found a show called Baking Impossible on Netflix which very uncomfortably merges engineering and baking into a new, questionable, field called Bakineering.
The show starts off with 9 teams. Each team consists of one baker and one engineer. Each round is a mission in which a contraption needs to be built almost entirely out of food. A separate dessert has to be made in addition to the machine. One team gets eliminated per mission. This edible moving object has to undergo a stress test to pass. The panel of judges has one engineer, one chef, and one bakineer. Each judge has to pass your work for you to go to the next round.
For example, one of the earliest challenges was to build an edible robot that contained a dessert and it had to go through an entire obstacle course. One mission was to build a gingerbread skyscraper that had to pass an earthquake stress test. Some buildings actually passed this test! One mission was to build a life sized CAR out of food, and crash it into a wall with a dummy inside to measure the impact. Somebody literally woke up one day and wondered what it would be like to ride an edible car, with FOOD stuffed in front to absorb the impact of a crash. Here are some of the other things they had to make - a remote controlled 2ft long ship, a chain reaction machine, a life sized mini golf set, an edible costume for a model which contains an interesting way to serve food and a FOUR foot long moving bridge! Have I thought the moon was a biscuit when I was little? Yes. Did I want to to turn a bridge into a cookie and eat it? Definitely not.
I wonder if the NASA scientist on the show ever thought she’d be using molten gummy bears and chocolate as epoxy to make an edible skyscraper. Someone actually found a way to mix rice krispy treats and chocolate to make 'edible wood'.
It was fun, strange, and painful to watch that show. My mind was blown in the best possible way. Not only did someone conceive of these downright bizarre challenges but there were also people who rose to the occasion and passed these tests. Now here’s the icky part. The contestants used TONS of rice krispies and countless sheet cakes as fillings. Did anybody eat them? We don't know. Only the special dessert was tasted on the show. I hope the crew got to eat the rest of it. I wonder if they threw the components that made the contraption per mission. A LOT of food was wasted to make this show and that sucked. They claimed the food was treated ‘sustainably’ and that it was given to other people but I doubt anyone would want to eat a sheet cake covered with glue. Another very very strange thing about this show is that the contestants wore the same clothes in ALL the challenges while the judges changed theirs. They said online that it was done to connect the clip from the earlier episode to the one that came after it but that’s absurd. If they had the budget for machines that measure the impact of a crash on a dummy, then they had the budget for outfit changes.
I was fascinated by how new, how crazy and awesome the challenges were. At the same time I was wincing when I saw cakes being chopped and tossed. There are countless hungry people on this planet, why would you make something so inconceivably wasteful?
Then again, cringing and giving away a few brain cells is the price you pay for watching trashy reality TV.
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📄 ARTICLES
⭐️ The Magnificent Bribe - Half a century ago, Lewis Mumford developed a concept that explains why we trade autonomy for convenience.
Tidbits stolen from the article -
+ “the fundamental difference between the good life and the ‘goods life’” — the way that consumption came to be seen as the highest moral and social value.
++ It is often easier to describe an intimidating dictatorial system than it is to explain why people go along with it. Thus, the bribe.
+++ The recipients of the bribe were encouraged to believe that “by accepting” this cascade of products and devices, “every human problem will be solved for them.” One could enjoy all the benefits of automation, so long as one did not mind being reduced to the role of an automaton.
++++ While specific technologies needed to be evaluated on their individual merits, in warning of the allure of the bribe, Mumford questioned not the devices themselves but the system that had produced them. And while that system might make a good show of talking about all of the ways its newest doodad would address human needs, the greater need being met was not the people’s, but the system’s need to entrench its own power.
+++++ before one accepts unconditionally the gifts that megatechnics offers one must examine the accompanying deficits and decide whether the benefits justify them: and if immediately desirable, whether they are actually so in the long term.”
⭐️ Basketry Gone Wild - "To meet the challenges of rising sea levels, the world should look to the Dutch, who "built their country partly at the bottom of the sea". Fascine mattresses — vast hand woven platforms braided from flexible willow boughs or reeds — were in use there from at least the 17C and the modern equivalent is still "basically everywhere" in the country. It's the perfect sustainable sea defense." (This article is published on Low Tech Magazine, a solar powered sustainable website, which sometimes goes offline. The link may or may not work at times. Try again later if it doesn't work the first time)
Labors of Love - The work of Ivan Illich can provide an antidote to fears about automation.
Our contemporary notion of the “job” is a somewhat recent development; previously, people satisfied most of their needs outside of the market economy.
I Made the World’s Blandest Facebook Profile, Just to See What Happens
⚡️ PODCASTS
We Broke the Planet. Now What? on Hidden Brain - We’ve grown accustomed to viewing climate change as an enemy we must urgently defeat. But is that the right metaphor for the greatest existential problem of our time?
📖 BOOK
⭐️ What Can A Body Do? How We Meet the Built World by Sara Hendren- This book isn’t about designing for disability but how design disables. It asks interesting questions in each chapter forcing you to rethink how all bodies interact with the world. Another very very interesting part in the introduction was the very recent ‘invention of average’. The average human doesn’t exist. There is no ‘normal’. The author adds how averaging out ergonomics and human needs does a great disservice to everyone.
I wish I read this when I was studying architecture. It opens up new worlds and new ways of thinking. Highly recommend this book to designers AND people who aren’t designers because it’ll change the way you look at the built world around you. (At least for a while, as you read this)
👾 COOL THINGS ONLINE
⭐️ How rich am I/ How much can I give - an interesting calculator that places you in the world based on your income and shows how you can use a small portion of your income to help others who don't have the means.
📸 Dreamy pastel tinted urban photography of buildings in Tokyo
📸 New York in the 1980's in all its glory
📸 Arquitectura Libre is "a long-term project on the self-built environment. It focuses primarily on the architecture of remittances; the fantastical houses being built by financing from Mexican immigrants in the US who send money home. Arquitectura libre explores the idea of a home more as symbol than as function."
✏️ Woodcut illustrations of diseases and how to fight them from 19th century Japan (also includes information on hygiene, pregnancy and ads for medicines + cosmetics)
✏️ Gustave Doré's Illustrations for The Rime of the Ancient Mariner – 1877
✏️ Beasts, Birds and Fishes : An Animal Alphabet for Boys & Girls
✏️ Jean Aubertin's soothing illustrations of everyday life
🎨 Ghanaian artist Betty Acquah's pointillistic paintings - Zoom into a painting and look at it for a while. You'll feel like you're moving with the dancers too.
✨Aydın Büyüktaş' landscape morphing
✨ Ra Paulette's hand carved CAVES
🫀 Innerbody - A detailed, visual breakdown of the human body.
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Until next time.
Warmly,
Sachi